Outline

Due Thursday, February 28th as an electronic copy, submitted to TurnItIn? (on Blackboard) before 9:30 a.m. and as a hard copy to your Seminar professor at the beginning of your Seminar class

Please provide me with citations and sources (at least three). Give me a one or two sentence

summary for the article/book/etc justifying why you will be using it.

Your proposal should be written in outline form using bullet points (there is an example
below).

Your outline must contain the following bold headings:

• Title: Give your project a tentative title, it can change later if you wish. It should be
descriptive of what your project is about.

• Topic areas: Where does your project fit into the field of American politics? For
instance, a study examining trade deals might be “economics, tax reform, job creation,
foreign relations.” You need at least three topics here.

• Research Question: What do the Democrats, Republicans, and Trump Administration think about (insert your specific subject here)?

• Importance: Simply put, why should we care about your project? To continue with
the example from above you might note that the economy impacts us all and if taxes
are lowered it might mean some government service will need to be cut. This should
be a short (four to five sentences) paragraph.

• Rough Outline: Give me some sense for how you’ll organize your paper. This isn’t
set in stone; but I would like to see some evidence that you have thought about how
to organize your paper I expect the paper to have at least two major sections (think
of the classic five paragraph essay, but substitute the word “section” for “paragraph”)
and each section can have multiple paragraphs as need be.

Ultimately, the final paper (not the proposal) will be in the 4-6 page range. The more detail you can give me
here the better as it will allow me to give you better feedback. Please point out things
which are unclear to you in the outline, that way I know where I should provide the
most guidance and where you feel you need the most help.

∗ Major auto-makers opposed to plan (Doe, CNN, 2017
And then use sub-bullet points to fill in the details between the lines.

• Expected Findings: What do you expect to find? Why? This should be about a
paragraph or two.

• Sources: Tell me what you’ll be using to research this topic. For each source provide
a sentence or two as to why you are using that source. For example, you might say:

– Nicholson, Chris and Paul Collins. 2008. “The Solicitor General’s Amicus Curiae
Strategies in the Supreme Court.” American Politics Research. 36: 382-415. —
This article examines the success of government lawyers. We hope it might show
us why some attorneys are more successful than others.

Please include at least three sources other than materials on the syllabus. Refer to
your notes from the library tutorial. But also, feel free to ask the reference librarians
at Bell Library for help.